When Theory Meets Practice. How people change by just listening

 

When Theory Meets Practice

How people change by just listening

I have often thought that education only becomes truly important when knowledge encounters lived life.

Not merely books.
Not merely theories.
But human beings.

This became especially clear to me during the research work in the favelas outside Vitória in Brazil. The medical students participating in the project came from the university carrying professional knowledge, medical concepts, and academic training. Many of them were highly capable students. They could analyse symptoms, discuss diagnoses, and understand medical relationships.

But in the favela they encountered something else.

Human beings living illness, fear, and poverty as part of everyday life.

And I believe these encounters changed many of them.

Perhaps this is something all education should ask itself:
What happens to knowledge when it meets reality?

In modern academic environments, it is easy to believe that understanding is primarily about information. We collect theories, models, and methods. These things matter. Yet some forms of insight arise only when one sits face to face with another human being.

In the favela this became clear every single day.

The students walked from house to house through narrow streets between small brick homes and fragile shacks. The sun rested heavily over the neighbourhood. Children ran between the houses. Music drifted out from open windows. Dogs slept in the shade. Life there was dense and sensory.

Some places smelled of food.
Other places of sewage and dust.

And everywhere, people.

People opening their doors to us.

I remember how some of the students appeared uncertain during the first days. Not because they lacked knowledge, but because reality could not be controlled in the way theories could.

In books, problems often appear orderly.
In real life, everything exists intertwined.

Illness was connected to poverty.
Poverty to violence.
Violence to fear.
Fear to hopelessness.
And at the same time:
care,
community,
humour,
dignity.

It was as though life itself refused to be divided into academic categories.

I believe this deeply affected the students.

For suddenly they were no longer sitting merely with “patients.”
They were sitting with families.
With children.
With elderly people.
With human beings telling the stories of their lives.

Sometimes we sat around small tables covered with plastic cloths, drinking strong sweet coffee while the students asked questions about health and everyday life. Other times the conversations unfolded outside the homes while neighbours walked past and children played around us.

Very little about these encounters resembled the sterile environment of a hospital.

Yet I believe the students learned something profoundly important there.

That health is never only about the body.

A human being cannot be understood apart from his or her life.

This is, in many ways, a simple insight.
Yet modern societies often forget it.

We divide human experiences into specialised categories:
medicine,
psychiatry,
economics,
social work,
education.

But in the favela everything was lived simultaneously.

A mother could be ill, frightened by violence in the neighbourhood, worried about the family economy, and at the same time trying to hold the family together with remarkable strength.

How could this be understood through one discipline alone?

Perhaps this was precisely what the students gradually began to discover.

That theory is necessary.
But insufficient on its own.

I especially remember one of the students after a home visit. He said very little as we walked back through the streets. Only later that day did he begin to speak.

“I thought I understood poverty,” he said quietly.
“But I had never been inside it before.”

I have never forgotten that sentence.

For it contains something important.

There is a difference between knowing something and experiencing something.

In modern education we often focus on competence. Yet perhaps we underestimate the importance of experience as a source of understanding.

Not experience alone.
But experience reflected through knowledge.

Perhaps this is precisely where true formation begins.

Hans-Georg Gadamer writes that understanding is not merely about method, but about how human beings gradually allow their own horizons to be challenged in encounters with others. I believe this happened to many of the students.

The favela challenged their assumptions about illness, poverty, and human dignity.

It also challenged their understanding of themselves.

For in encounters with people living under difficult conditions, another question often emerges:
What does it truly mean to help another human being?

This question can never be fully answered through theory alone.

I also believe the students began to understand the importance of presence.

Not merely asking the correct questions.
But being truly present.

To sit down without hurry.
To listen.
To tolerate silence.
To meet people with respect.

This may sound simple.
Yet in modern institutions, time is often the first thing that disappears.

Everything must become more efficient.
Measured.
Documented.

Yet it is often in the slow encounters that people feel truly seen.

Professor Pedro Fortes understood this deeply, I believe. He spoke with people as though he had all the time in the world. Not because the problems were small, but because human beings need time in order to appear as human beings.

This made a deep impression on me.

And I believe it made a deep impression on the students as well.

For in the favela they perhaps learned something difficult to teach through lectures alone:
that human beings do not primarily wish to be analysed.

They wish to be met.

Perhaps this is also something healthcare systems in modern societies increasingly risk losing.

As systems become larger and more efficient, human beings themselves can become smaller.

Diagnoses grow.
While the person behind the diagnosis slowly disappears.

In the favela it was difficult to maintain such distance.

There we sat inside people’s homes.
We felt the heat.
Heard the music.
Saw the children.
Sensed the fear.

Reality came close.

I believe this also changed the students’ relationship to knowledge itself.

For theory suddenly acquired faces.

Poverty was no longer merely a social concept.
It was the elderly woman sharing mangoes with us despite possessing almost nothing herself.

Violence was no longer merely crime statistics.
It was young boys carrying grief and revenge inside their bodies.

Health was no longer only medical variables.
It was human beings trying to preserve hope in the midst of unrest and uncertainty.

Perhaps this is precisely what practice does to theory:
it makes it human.

I believe modern universities need such experiences.

Not because theory is unimportant.
But because theory without encounters with lived life easily becomes abstract.

And abstract knowledge can sometimes lose contact with human reality.

In Norway we have long traditions of professional education where practical training is considered important. Yet I believe the favela taught me something about practice that went deeper than ordinary professional training.

For the students did not merely enter a profession.
They entered other people’s lifeworlds.

That changes something.

Perhaps also the way one sees oneself.

I believe many of the students discovered that knowledge also carries responsibility.

Responsibility for how one meets human beings.
How one uses power.
How one listens.
How one sees.

For perhaps education, in the end, is not only about what people know.

But about who they become.

I believe this is something modern societies need to reflect upon more deeply.

We speak much about competence.
Less about character.

Much about efficiency.
Less about judgement.

Much about information.
Less about wisdom.

Yet perhaps wisdom is precisely what human beings need most when encountering the vulnerability of others.

Not perfect answers.
But human maturity.

I believe this is something practical philosophy tries to preserve:
that understanding is not merely intellectual.

It is also ethical.
Relational.
Existential.

In the favela I saw how theory and practice slowly began moving toward one another.

Not perfectly.
Not without uncertainty.

But through encounters between human beings.

Sometimes I still think about the students walking through the warm streets with notebooks in their hands.

About how they stopped to listen.
About how some of them grew quiet after the home visits.
About how reality gradually began to work within them.

Perhaps this is what education, in its deepest form, is truly about.

Not merely filling people with knowledge.

But opening them toward the world.

Toward other human lives.
Toward complexity.
Toward vulnerability.
Toward responsibility.

And perhaps also toward the simple recognition that no theory can ever fully contain a human life.

It must be encountered.

In the favela I saw how theory and practice slowly began moving toward one another.

Not perfectly.

Not without uncertainty.

But through encounters between human beings.

The illustrasjon was made by OpenAI/ChatGPT